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in life and his mother apparently married as her second husband her uncle who was a great supporter of Pericles. Plato was probably brought up in his house. Some of the leading personalities of the oligarchic terror of 404 were his near-relations and it was through them that Plato came to be acquainted with Socrates from his boyhood.
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Plato's early ambitions were political but the oligarchic terror was a great shock to him and he held back for a time. But his experience with democracy later was no better, for it was democracy that had so unjustly put Socrates to death. Now he realised that there was no place for a man of conscience in active politics. On the execution of Socrates, Plato and other Socratic men took temporary refuge with Eucleides at Megara and from there Plato at least travelled extensively in Greece, Egypt and Italy. He spent some time in one of the Pythagorean communities and was deeply influenced by Pythagorean beliefs. He travelled to Syracuse where he incurred the displeasure of the Tyrant who betrayed him into the hands of the Spartan ambassador. The latter put him up for sale in Aegina where an admirer recognised and bought him. Freed from here Plato came back to Athens. When Plato's friends heard of his misadventures at Syracuse, they raised the money to ransom him but the admirer having refused to be so reimbursed, the money was used by Plato to establish a school of wisdom near Athens.
Thus was established Plato's Academy about the year 387 B.C. The name was taken from the surrounding park or grove which had belonged to an owner named Akademos. This developed into an institution for the systematic pursuit of philosophical and scientific research. Plato presided over it for the rest of his life teaching mathematics and philosophy. Twice during this period he went to Sicily, once in 367 B.C. and again in 361 B.C., to tutor the young Dionysius II, successor to Tyrant of Syracuse, to whom he imparted his own notion of an ideal state. But this did not yield any expected result. To Plato, the Academy must have appeared as his chief work, as to us Plato appears as one of the greatest of philosophical writers. In Epistle, he offers a comparatively unfavourable verdict on written works in contrast with the contact of living minds. Unlike the Pythagorean brotherhood, Plato's Academy put less emphasis on spiritual life. Religion or holy life was taught to the students, male as well as female, as a part of basic philosophy but the other important course of study was mathematics. Plato's Academy however, did not produce spiritual leaders; it produced, in contrast, scientists, cynics, stoics, hedonists, political economists, demagogues, logicians. About this time, politically Athens was humbled; there was
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